Public Health Responsibilities in Air Pollution

Impact of Air Pollution on Public Health

The air we breathe contains emissions from many different sources: industry, motor vehicles, heating and commercial sources, household fuels as well as tobacco smoke. The effects of air pollution on health have been intensively studied in recent years. The results of these studies showed that air pollution harms human health and particularly is harmful for those who are already vulnerable becau...

Air pollution, public health, and inflation

Since the passage of the environmental legislation in the early 1970's, critics have attacked these laws as being unnecessary and for contributing significantly to the problem of inflation in the United States. This paper is an attempt to put the inflationary costs of air pollution into perspective by considering them in light of the cost, especially to public health, of not proceeding with pol...

Motor vehicles, air pollution, and public health.

Over the past decade, an increasing body of scientific evidence has accrued associating outdoor air pollution with certain types of cancer. Specifically, two major large prospective epidemiological studies first published in the early to mid-1990s and, in the case of one study, recently confirmed with a larger data base, found an association between exposure to particulate air pollution and lun...

The public health relevance of air pollution abatement.

Assuming a causal relationship between current levels of air pollution and morbidity/mortality, it is crucial to estimate the public health relevance of the problem. The derivation of air pollution attributable cases faces inherent uncertainties and requires influential assumptions. Based on the results of the trinational impact assessment study of Austria, France, and Switzerland, where pruden...

Air Pollution and Health